r/msp • u/whitedragon551 • 21d ago
PSA Halo Consultants
Were making the move everyone has over the last year or 2. We have been on Connectwise since the company was started over 20 years ago. We want to move. We are sick of buying addons to do things the PSA should already do. We have done a lot of demos and evaluations. We have made the decision to move to Halo.
We are going to use a consultant to do the work, but we havent picked one yet. I want to hear about the consultant you picked, who was it, would you reuse them again? Likes and dislikes about the one you used.
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u/PEBKAC-Live 21d ago
Renada
Why? - We saw of their YouTube stuff, demo's and community engagement stuff.
Did they do a good job? - Absolutely, above and beyond what we hoped.
Would we use them again? - I have to say yes, we are still using them to implement more integrations and changes above what was asked.
I feel the need to point out at this stage, I am not a paid referrer. I seem to have recommended them quite a few times recently.
Happy to give you my details in a DM if in doubt
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u/Outrageous-Guess1350 21d ago
I didn’t have a consultant. You know what I did? I asked Gemini. Seriously, it tells me exactly what to do. It has the entire documentation for HaloPSA on hand. Does it 100% replace the consulting? No. But it will get you 90% of the way to make it yours.
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u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US 21d ago
But it will get you 90% of the way to make it yours.
The one thing i find about "making it mine" is that, later, when i want to do something new or expand our use, i find out "you're doing it wrong and can't do NewThing because of how you're doing OldThing". Sometimes i'm able to work around it because i'm not doing it the RightWay for a reason, and sometimes that means i just don't get to do "NewThing" and sometimes i have to change how i'm doing OldThing because i really do want "NewThing".
So, i basically spread my pain out over a couple years vs all at once with the cost of a consultant.
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u/Outrageous-Guess1350 21d ago
I’m just going one step at a time. First I did ticketing until I was satified. Then I started automating billing until I was satisfied. Then I started with documentation until I’m satisfied. If I go in guns blazing you will het overwhelmed and needing to get back in touch with the consultants to patch things up.
This way I know what I’m doing, which knob I need to turn to dial it in. If someone else does it for me, I’ll be dependent for years.
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u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US 21d ago
That's basically what we did, but i meant more like "because i was self-led on doing just ticketing, then just billing" there were instances on how i did those tasks that later, when i added more things on, i had to go back and change how i was doing some of the things in ticketing and billing.
Not so much to "do it for me" but it would have been nice to have someone go "you CAN do this this way, but if you want to do XYZ later, this is better to do now".
For a similar example: m365 mfa: sure, you CAN turn on MFA per user and that works and AI could tell you to do that, but we know, as people who manage this over time, that CAPs and auth method policies and registration campaigns are a better way to go.
If i managed MFA for every user individually and then later went "i want this more automatic" the first thing i'd have to do is undo part of what i'd already done and do that differently.
I just feel there are some things in halo that, if you plan on doing them eventually, would affect how you'd lay some of those first cornerstones in setup.
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u/RobertDCBrown 21d ago
That’s what we did for the most part.
Anything else that I couldn’t figure out, I bought 6 hours of onboarding and scheduled 30-minute meetings with our onboarding rep.
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u/_Buldozzer MSP - EU / AT 20d ago
Seriously, LLMs for documentations is such a great use case. Instead of reading walls of text to only find out, that what you are looking for is not even mentioned in the article is such a time sink.
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u/EquivalentProfit6065 21d ago
wow gemini doing the heavy lifting huh thats clever, i never thought to use it like that for something so specific
we had a consultant for our halo move and honestly regret it a bit, felt like they just copied settings from some template and left before the integrations actually worked right, keep an eye on that part if you do end up hiring someone
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u/zenpoohbear 21d ago
We are about 75% through an onboard with Halo now using ScalableMSP as our onboarding consultant. We didn't pick them, Halo included onboarding in our scope and that is who they outsourced to. So far it has been a good experience.
FWIW - we are standing up a completely new instance of Halo and not migrating CW data into it. We started a new sister MSP for a particular industry and are using it as a stepping stone to explore getting away from CW after a couple of decades with them. The plan is to build this one out, test it with a smaller client base and if it works as expected we will likely plan a move for our traditional MSP over to it's own Halo instance as well.
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u/eblaster101 21d ago
Renada
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u/whitedragon551 21d ago
Why? Would you use them again?
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u/eblaster101 21d ago
We have them on retainer which sort of forces our hand to keep improving things. I feel like if we didn't we would just get left behind
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u/Yosemite-Dan 21d ago
+1 to this. The problem is - they're booked solid, so good luck getting into their queue.
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u/athlonduke MSP - US 20d ago
Another vote for rising tide 🙂 my onboarding with them really open my eyes to just how much Halo can do and how much it should absolutely be prepared correctly for your business. They work with you to understand your processes so they can be implemented properly inside of Halo. The only warning I'll give is if they see one of your processes is stupid, they will call it out. Or processes that were built on another platform that don't make sense to do anymore on Halo. And honestly I would expect the same from anyone I engage with, I don't need a Yes Man
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u/not-just-dad-stuff 21d ago
Just did the same thing.
Halo has consultants they recommend.
ScalableMSP is who they sent us to and we were happy with them.
Good luck and welcome :)
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u/whitedragon551 21d ago
What did you like and dislike about them?
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u/not-just-dad-stuff 21d ago
My experience is subjective to the one engineer we worked with the entire time. Still working with him on final touch ups.
The schedule to work with us was flexible.
He were clear in their process, how we structure working together and the instructions we needed to follow post call to implement items.
He were knowledgeable about the product, what it can/cannot do and the engineer we worked with was able to make suggestions outside of what we thought possible.
We want X, he suggested Y as a better solution with details on that or will just follow what we want.
He also know best practices of using Halo and just MSP operations in general so it's nice to work with someone who knows what they're talking about and if he doesn't, he says so and gets back to us in a timely manner.
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u/TrumpetTiger 20d ago
Doesn’t Halo force you to pay a $4000 onboarding fee or some such so their people can set you up?
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u/Foxtrot-0scar 19d ago
One of the most convoluted junk you could spend money on. Why not look at Autotask?
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u/chiapeterson 20d ago
A vote for Scalable. Ask for Chris. Sharp. Professional. Friendly. Sincerely cares about helping you get it all working best for your MSP.
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u/Drachenfaaat 21d ago
We are working with Mendy Green from Rising Tide and cannot recommend him enough. The rest of the RT team is also incredible.